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Another Historic Gold Coast Estate Falls by the Wayside

Lands End - Melville, NY

The Estate that is rumored to be the inspiration for the classic novel “The Great Gatsby” is slated for demolition later this month. While many attempts were made to sell the estate there was little to no interest given the amount of additional funds that would have been required to restore the property.

By Emily C. Dooley Newsday

MELVILLE, N.Y. — The once-grand white house watches over Long Island Sound from the tip of Sands Point, its days numbered.

Lands End, the 25-room Colonial Revival mansion that local lore says was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s inspiration for Daisy Buchanan’s home in “The Great Gatsby” faces demolition this month.

In the 1920s and ’30s, Winston Churchill, the Marx Brothers and Ethel Barrymore attended parties there. Fitzgerald was perched on the back deck, drinking in the view. Rooms featured marble, parquet and wide wood-planked floors, Palladian windows and hand-painted wallpaper.

Now, the front door is off its hinges, wood floors have been torn up for salvage, windows are missing and the two-story Doric columns are unsteady.

Sands Point Village in January approved plans to raze the house and divide the site into lots for five custom homes starting at $10 million each.

Lands End is the latest Gold Coast estate to fall. With each demolition, the North Shore loses more of its gilded past, when sea breezes and social events attracted the rich and famous. Historians say hundreds of the mansions have been lost in the past 50 years as owners faced increasing taxes and high maintenance costs.

“The cost to renovate these things is just so overwhelming that people aren’t interested in it,” said Clifford Fetner, president of Jaco Builders in Hauppauge, N.Y., and Lands End project construction manager. “The value of the property is the land.”